Teaching to the Misconception: Critical Thinking and Pre-Service Elementary Teachers

摘要

Over the past few decades, numerous studies have demonstrated that pre-service and in-service teachers fall victim to the same misconceptions as the students they are or will be teaching. At the same time, research has shown that addressing the misconceptions head-on and leading.students to a deep, personal understanding of why their previous conceptions were erroneous aids in replacement of misconceptions with an accurate understanding of the natural world. This paper demonstrates how this was accomplished in a required university-level Earth/space/physical science course for pre-service elementary school teachers, with an emphasis on examples from the Sun-Earth-Moon system.